CHENNAI: There are many aromas that bring along a piece of nostalgia — the sillage of petrichor, the sweet scents of candy, and sometimes, even the sharp smell of new paper and freshly sharpened pencils will do the trick. But none compete with the aroma of a parent’s cooking that permeates through the house.
This wouldn’t be an egregious statement, certainly not for Rohini Chandrakumar, the founder of Oga’s, a takeaway joint offering an eclectic mix of home-cooked food.
“My mother ran a successful catering business called Pantry Car and I have grown up with those smells of her cooking. She was a really good cook. So, the topic (of discussion) in our house has always been food. There was a lot of experimentation, whether it was Kerala-style cooking or hardcore non-vegetarian meals,” she says, adding that it is the best of her mothers’ work that she has taken forward with her own culinary adventure that is named after her nickname ‘Oga’.
Customer satisfaction
Nestled on Sterling Avenue in Nungambakkam, the business is run out of the compound of her home where two cooks Saras and Usha prepare the meals for delivery.
And while they work with feel, weaving in the home-cooked goodness, Rohini ensures that every dish going out also offers consistency and flavour. “Saras and Usha have been working with my family for 15 years. They are not professional cooks hired from some culinary school but they are really good cooks trained for this.
At the same time, it is very important to me that the food is tasted everyday, every time it is made, and offers consistency as it is a professional set-up. So, it turns out the same every time and keeps us (in a good light) with the customers who have stayed with us from the beginning,” she mentions. Rohini recently moved to London, leaving the onground care of the joint in the hands of her friend Raji, who carries on Rohini’s expectations of the food.
While a small business in nature, Oga’s has managed to create a loyal customer base, Rohini says, adding that many even reorder the same items every weekend. “From day one, we had repeated customers.
The messages we have received are amazing, I love having that personal relationship with them and even having WhatsApp conversations. I have never even met a lot of them but we are on good terms because we make (their food) happen for them and they are happy with the food,” she shares.
Serving home-style
The menu curated by Rohini not only accommodates rehashed recipes from her mother — like panrolls and mutton chukka but also her husband’s Andhraiite family recipes like their Reddi shredded pork.
There is also the inclusion of other original items like Khow Suey, Pork Egg Fried Rice, Finger-lickin’ Ribs and Pork ‘n’ Roll. Rohini plans to launch another vegetarian dish soon which would add to the otherwise limited menu for green eaters.
Some dishes from Oga’s made it on our plates at CE recently. We began with the panrolls which were fried for us but are generally sold frozen. While the panrolls had lost some crunch in the delivery — as Rohini had warned us; the panrolls are otherwise sold frozen for customers to fry at home — they still offered a delicious creamy filling of cheese, chicken and ham that one could envision as finger food at a party.
“I call our food home-cooked magic. It’s without too much oil, hearty, warm food. We have few dishes but whatever we do, we do well. The panrolls are a 90s staple birthday party dish and we have rehashed it,” Rohini explains.
The serving of Best Porkin’ Pandi Curry, mutton chukka (a Diwali special on the menu) and Reddi Shredded Pork with a side of Paaputtu, was an inviting combination. The gooey coconut oil gravy of the pandi curry with the fatty pork offered a well-balanced savoury profile balanced with the sweet perhaps, too sweet to some but not us and crumbly paaputtu.
And the chukka added to the meal with its delicate kick of spices that lingered on the tongue. The shredded pork was a tender mash of meat, which was chewier than the jackfruit alternative in the Jackfruit Kathi Roll that followed. Enveloped in a crunchy wrap and egg (optional), the succulent jackfruit was paired with the sharp acidity of onions resulting in a satisfying bite.
The relish of the savoury curry was broken by the fall-of-the-bone meat of the ribs, glazed heavily in a sweet-sour sauce. The Finger-Lickin’ in the name does not lie. We wrapped up our meal with the Khow Suey with an earthy smell and coconut milk soup elevated with tangy lemon.
While this would be a good option for a cold, misty morning, it could not surpass its predecessors in the humid Chennai heat. The meal lingered on our minds as much as it did on the palate but there was certainly no stopping us from seconds of the pandi curry.
To pre-order meals, call 9789011191 or visit eatselecta.com/ogas. Delivery will be done on Friday and Saturday. Price: From Rs 170